Aphantasia poll

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My 16-year-old daughter was diagnosed with Level 1 ASD a couple of months ago and a significant aspect of her diagnosis was aphantasia. It is something that has her basically living in the present all the time. That, combined with an emotional flatline, means she has zero motivation. She knows what she wants to do in life, a great passion for working with animals, but getting motivated about going to post-secondary education next year or for anything else in the future doesn't happen. She can't visualize it, which means there is no emotion connected with it. It makes planning for the future incredibly challenging.

I feel that the combination of aphantasia and alexithymia effects me very profoundly in a similar way, and I suspect that co-occuring alexithymia (and/or executive function impairments) may make a lot of difference to how impairing aphantasia is perceived to be.

My autobiographical memory seems little different than if it were something I'd read about somewhere. Recalling memories doesn't evoke sensory imagery or emotional responses; they're not "relived" as most people seem to describe (and like the idea of "the mind's eye", I find it hard to even know how metaphorically people are speaking when they talk about reminiscing in this way). I think that this is a primary reason why I find it hard to feel "connected" with the other people in my life - they almost cease to exist when they're not physically present or if I'm not explicitly reminded of them. It feels like "a" past, but not "my" past.

The future seems equally alien to me. I understand conceptually the idea that changing my behaviours will effect changes in other aspects of my life, and I might even be able to make reasonable predictions about the practical consequences. But I struggle enormously to imagine in what way they would effect my emotional well-being; the very idea of it seems too abstract, and I can conceptualise it only in terms of the emotions that I'm experiencing in the current moment (which I'm not good at interpreting in the first place).

So yes, the feeling of only having a "now", as you describe it, is very familiar to me.

I have a lot of 'A' ie aphantasia, Aspergers, alexithymia, asexual. My autobiographical memory is like a Fray Bentos pie ie not much meat under the pie crust .

^ I've wondered sometimes whether that's why the experts now call my condition "ASD" - aside from the 'A's, I have collected some 'S's (sensory sensitivity, synaesthesia, sleep disorder), and a few 'D's (dyspraxia, dissociation, various other "dysfunctions")! I wonder whether I'm a human or a cod-latin/greek word-salad sometimes!

For me D= dyspraxia and dysgraphia

S= schizoaffective and social anxiety

One thing that puzzles me is that I've come across quite a lot of people, online ,with it who have good/very good (visuo)spatial ability. Mine averages about 66.

^ Yes, that puzzles me a lot, too - maybe even more so because I am one of those paradoxical aphantasics who can somehow perform those tasks well. I've always been into making art, engineering drawing was one of my best school subjects, and I've worked using 3D design software. On mental figure-rotation tests, I generally do well, too. The only resolution to the paradox that I can come up with is that I have some kind of internal model, but that it's used invisibly as a "building block" of higher cognitive functions without being accessible to my conscious awareness. IIRC, you've said in the past that you have difficulty with navigation, too (apologies if I've remembered incorrectly), which generally doesn't trouble me too much, so I wonder if there are multiple components or underlying explanations for aphantasia.

I think aphantasia may be on a spectrum, much like autism is. I feel I have a form of aphantasia, but not to the extent where I can't picture anything in my head. I can picture simple shapes for example. But most of the mental images I have are incredibly vague. I also find it really difficult to manipulate objects in my head. I read that most people can solve mental rotation tasks pretty quickly, but it takes me forever to solve them. I also find mental math to be difficult.

For those of you who have aphantasia, do you picture things in your dreams? My dreams are often quite vivid, which I find odd given my poor mental visualization ability when conscious.

I wonder what someone who is blind can picture in their mind about the world. Sure, they wouldn't get visual scenes, but I think that they would just about have to form some kind of relationship between items in their mind. Without that representation in their minds, it would seem like they would really have little idea of how to find anything.

It's not normal for me to dream vividly (or at least to remember doing so), and what I normally remember of dreams is usually very banal - not much different to random mundane experiences from everyday life. But I had a spell when I was on the anti-depressant Mirtazapine when I had incredibly vivid and immersive dreams which were extremely memorable (the memories didn't fade as dream memories usually do, either). It was a huge surprise to me to find that I had this capability for such immersive sensory imagination. But it was also perplexing in a way, because it made me very aware that, even though I still couldn't "picture" anything from the dreams when I recalled them, I was absolutely certain that they had been incredibly vivid. This is another reason that I have the idea I mentioned above that my "mind's eye" might be present, but somehow only sub-conscious.


Yes, I think that's a very interesting angle to look at it from. I'm also inclined to think that there must be some kind of non-visual representation underlying sensory memories, so that seeing something in the "mind's eye" isn't a direct memory of a sensory experience, but rather a reconstruction or simulation created from the underlying encoding. I often feel that way when I'm writing computer code; there's some kind of representation of the code's structure in my mind that I would find almost impossible to put into words or draw a diagram or graph of; a kind of very abstract "sixth sense" that allows me to fluidly navigate my way around it.

You've remembered perfectly well. That coupled with a mild degree of agoraphobia means that,by myself,I'll stick to a very small area when outside.

That's a good question. It's one I struggle to give an answer to. My dream recall, as in just generally remembering a dream I've had, is poor . Trying to remember whether I've pictured things when recalling a dream is even more difficult.

When I was younger, I didn't remember much in the way of my dreams. The one fairly common theme that I remember is going to school but forgetting to put my clothes on.

Then in the early 1990s, I was working and also teaching classes three days a week at a university about 40 miles away. I would often work until about 4 am, get a couple of hours sleep, get up, shave, shower, and drive to the university to teach an 8 am class.

For a while I would take a nap after I got back. Then I got to where I was just sleeping the two hours a day but about once every 8 to 10 days I would crash for hours. Then I got to where I just slept two hours a day.

One consequence of this is that I stopped dreaming. For the next ten years, I would sleep two hours a day and have a dream maybe once or twice a year.

Then I got some kind of infection and my sleep extended to about three to four hours a day. And then a couple of years later to about six hours a day.

My dreams came back and for the last 15 years, I have been dreaming far more than before and found them much easier to remember. I also don't seem to have to go all the way to a really deep state of sleep to dream anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I woke up one morning, looked at the clock, and since I didn't need to get back up soon, I went back to sleep and immediately continued the dream that I was having when I woke up. There wasn't time to go back to any deep state of sleep.

I am not sure if I have aphantasia or not. I might be too literal or confused by the variety of responses. I can logically imagine an image but I don't actually see it.Things are placed here or there, a glimpse of colour. I'm good with faces but not until I see them repeatedly, I dream but it's more like I'm telling myself the dream, things happen and I'm aware of the action, but there is no image beyond a foggy shape, or the thought.

Could someone please explain in depth what I am supposed to see when I imagine something. Not photographic imagery, but what is typical.

I have noticed that in listening to an audio book or other story, I never form any image in my mind of what I'm listening to. I pick up the words and meaning, not the image. The same goes for reading.

For what it's worth, I don't learn much from listening to a prof give a lecture, but I do from reading the material. I don't know if that is related or not.

I can only picture flashes of imagery in my memories. I mostly recall sensory elements (sounds, smells, textures), but not the visual. Everything is like a two second snapshot view, rather than an episodic visual memory. When I try to see something in my memory it's like looking down a dark tunnel. There's literally darkness around the object in my mind, and the object is really small.

Most of my dreams don't even have pictures. They're audio-only.